Distractions
by Flashyfirebird
Summary: Feyre is desperate for distractions. Rhys is happy to oblige.


**Distractions**

The Spring Court is sufficient distraction at first. Everything is different to Feyre's new eyes and ears, all the eddies of magic and bursts of color and riots of sound are enough to consume her waking minutes and hours. But the novelty wears off too fast. Two weeks adjustment, it's familiar again.

And no longer the least bit distracting.

She consumes her days painting to help, her brush slithering over the canvas. She tries to capture the greens and the golds of Spring Court, how the woods are now bursting with life and with beauty. Green is the opposite of red, and it fills all her paintings, bouquets of bright, joyous color.

It is distracting. But it's not enough.

Tamlin's too distracted to serve as her distraction (the irony of this does not escape her). There are treaties to make and still beasts to fight off, so much chaos in the wake of Amarantha's departure. She spends nightfall with him, but the days he can't fill. Sometimes she's glad of his absence. Not that she's not ecstatic just to have him safe (she _is_ , she _will be_ , she _must be_ ) but it's so _tiring_ pretending that everything's normal and smiling and telling Tamlin she's _fine_ when the hole in her chest throbs and aches. She pushes the memories to the back of her mind, slams the door, locks the key, but they still somehow manage to whisper at the edge of her consciousness like a Bogge. And she chants to herself, when she knows no one's listening, the same words that Lucien taught her that first day in Prythain:

 _Don't look, don't look, don't look –_

-v-

Rhysand comes at the end of the month to collect her. Feyre knows he's coming. Her palm, her left palm, where ink spirals like ivy, has been tingling all day, the tug of their bond tickling her insides. He arrives after dark when she's out in the garden, a candle in hand, trying to capture the last tiny furl of a rose. She senses him even before she sees him rise from the shadows. His violet eyes flicker to her, lazy and calculated, and then shift to her painting, next to her on the grass. "How very... _Spring_ ," he says.

(She can't help but think, at that moment, how very _Night_ he is, a phantom from the darkness, come to spirit her away).

He asks after Tamlin's whereabouts. Tamlin's with a patrol, but he'll be back soon.

"And we shan't wait for him." His breath tickles her ear. And she's strangely, traitorously, _so glad_ to be leaving.

-v-

The Night Court is nothing like Feyre imagined. Perhaps she was expecting a kind of muted replica of Amarantha's Under the Mountain; instead the air is deliciously fresh, a night cloaked in stars with the scent of wild pine in a castle that's high on a hill. She spreads out her arms to catch starlight, tasting it over her skin. Rhysand's eyes glint as he watches her watch the aurora. His hand on her waist is warm as he guides her inside.

In the hall, it is more like she thought it would be. Dancing, laughter – not all of it nice – in a room that's more shadows than light, and the goblets, which smell of fae wine. Rhysand offers one to her. Feyre takes it. A ritual so familiar it is laughable. She stares up at him and he down at her, and for a moment Feyre wonders if she should throw the drink in his face, for all the times he made her take it. His eyes slant, as though he's laughing, as though he's daring her to.

Instead, Feyre downs the wine.. _A distraction_. She sees Rhysand's eyes widen.

To her dismay, the wine's not the oblivion-inducing bliss she hoped. Being fae comes with a stronger tolerance. But at least the ache is dulled somewhat. Feyre takes another glass.

Rhysand tilts her chin toward him. She leans into the touch, mellow now with the effects of the wine; the whole room is shadows, dark and feral. The music twists into her, lightning fast, wild.

"Dance," Rhysand whispers.

Feyre dances.

-v-

He leads her to a room later – her room, he tells her, where she will stay while she's here. A small part of her expects him to follow her inside, untoward as that would be, and she braces herself for the possibility, but he smiles knowingly.

"What _would_ Tamlin say, if he saw you right now?"

That is all. She snarls a reply – ("I'm not blue with smudged paint, a step up from my usual encounters with _you_ ") – and stomps to the bed.

In what passes for morning in this part of the world, Rhysand takes her to breakfast, and he shows her the rest of the grounds. It's more shadows than sunlight. The cold beauty suits him. In the afternoon, he takes her down to the library. "To make use of your time here," he says. "After all, a high lord's wife must be taught how to read, and that pitiful spectacle during your second challenge is something I never wish to see repeated."

Feyre wants to slap him. In the center of the room, on the desk, a child's book lies open. Another book lies next to it. A dictionary.

"Read it, and look up the words you don't know," he says.

Her lips curl back in a grimace. But she cuts off her reply. He's right. She has to do it, she has to face her shame. Tamlin's been too kind to say anything since she got back, but Feyre knows, it's only a matter of time before her ignorance winds up hurting him. Just like she hurt all those people during the third – _no, don't look, don't look..._

Rhysand senses her falter. "What is it?" he asks. She wants to hide at the hint of gentleness in his voice.

"Nothing."

She forces her eyes to the pages.

The story's a dark one, a story of sacrifice, loss and death and blood and murder. She should have expected nothing else of the Night Court, she should not be shocked that even their child's stories have a tenor of darkness. Nonetheless, long before the ending, she's set the book down, unsure whether to laugh or cry at the roiling of her stomach.

She does neither. Instead, she stares blankly at the words she's been copying. When Rhysand comes back, she's only defined the first three.

-v-

Tamlin appears, some time later, to check on her. He's agitated, and his eyes carry shadows. He was not pleased by her sudden departure. _You could have left a –_ (the word "note" goes unfinished as he realizes his mistake). Rhysand smirks and makes overly possessive gestures and acts generally insufferable and then he sends Tamlin away with a not-so-subtle threat of war if he trespasses again.

After Tamlin leaves, Feyre goes back to the library to pick up the picture book. This time she makes it all the way to the end before she vomits.

-v-

The songs of the Night Court are wild, even wilder than those of the Spring Court, whirling and dark, and Feyre dances. She dances and drinks and distracts, distracts herself, distracts Rhys. Is distracted.

The other fae dance in shifting patterns. Lords and ladies mill about, flirting and laughing and tossing down wine like it's water. Rhys follows her gaze. "Dalliance is common in the night court," he says.

He's tall, very tall, right above her. Amused. Confident. She wonders if it is an offer he makes to her now, or a threat, or a promise – or all those things, or none.

"I love Tamlin."

Is it herself or him that she's trying to remind? The room spins, and the dancers blur and she whirls in his arms to the beat of the drums, heavy and dark, like blood gushing free.

-v-

Her last day in court, Rhysand hands her a canvas.

It's dark in the night court. Feyre wants to paint green and trees and life. Instead she finds herself painting crags and high white mountains and valleys like death. The dawn stains the clouds red, red like blood, red like death, _red, red, red,_ it is all she can see.

Feyre wonders if she's losing her mind.

She doesn't realize she's stopped, doesn't realize she's been staring at some far-off point for what feels like an eternity. Doesn't know, until Rhysand takes her hand and says in a voice that is disarmingly soft, "May I?"

She feels tendrils of thought flicker into her head and before she can warn him ( _Don't look_!) he is _looking_. She tries not to flinch as he sifts through her thoughts. She can feel him looking, searching, until he finds it, the thing that makes her tremble and cry, the moment she's been trying to bury.

"Feyre," he says.

She sags against him. It feels like she is drowning. The young fae's face stains the back of her eyes, his mouth sagging with fear. The female fae's prayer echoes in Feyre's head. Bronze eyes, golden hair, beckoning, _please, please kill me_. And blood, blood, the heavy thud of a knife to the heart, blood bubbling from their lips.

"Feyre."

It's a wound, a hurt that won't go away, and the more she tries to bury it, distract herself from it, the more it seems to haunt her.

Rhys' hand is on her temple, and suddenly, the clamor in her mind is lessening. The metal tang of magic fills the air.

She's still buried in Rhys' shirt, her eyes squeezed shut. Slowly she looks up, feeling half mortified. He's kept her from shattering once before, and he's all that is holding her back from shattering now. The thought makes her go cold. Rhys doesn't notice, or he pretends not to. He stares down at her, indecipherable. "Your heart is _decidedly_ human," he says.

"Did you... feel this way ever?" (Guilt and pounding grief, like her entire world is crumbling) "In Amarantha's palace. Did you –"

"Yes."

Then he's kissing her, and she's drowning again, but different than before. She loses sight of the shimmering stars and the high white mountains and the chill of the north; all she feels is the heat of his skin, blazing and driving and dancing against her. It's all a distraction, it's still a distraction, but it's also much more.

"I still love Tamlin," she whispers, much, much later, in the darkness of his rooms.

"Yes."

"I saved him from Amarantha."

"I know."

"I won't ever leave him."

Rhys' answering smile haunts her deeper than their deaths.

-v-

Their first child has gold-brown hair and violet eyes. Rhys reads her books from his library. Feyre teaches her how to paint roses.


End file.
